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1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.2.1Philosophical Imagination and the Evolution of Modern Philosophyhttps://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/uncategorized/philosophical-imagination/
https://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/uncategorized/philosophical-imagination/#respondTue, 15 Aug 2017 15:57:38 +0000http://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/?p=281Would you like to get a conceptual overview of the history of philosophy in an easy-to-read-book that is hard to set down? James Danaher has just written that book. Throughout history, the philosophical imagination has created our evolving perspectives on …Continue reading →

Would you like to get a conceptual overview of the history of philosophy in an easy-to-read-book that is hard to set down? James Danaher has just written that book.

Throughout history, the philosophical imagination has created our evolving perspectives on the world that shape our thought. Modern materialism, rationalism, empiricism, phenomenalism, historicism, existentialism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, and feminism are schools of thought have their origin in the imagination, however we all too often believe these perspectives give us access to truth itself, rather than being ways to make sense of our experience. Truth as something to know will always be relative to the imagination and the perspectives it creates.

However, another notion of truth as something to be has emerged over the history of philosophical thought from Socrates to the present that is not relative to the changing perspectives of truth as something to know. This book distills the evolution of these concepts into an easily readable history of philosophy.

This is the book I have been waiting for. Danaher straightens out the maze in a readable, compact, and comprehensive journey of twenty-five centuries of philosophical perspective from Heraclitus and Aristotle to Kuhn and Lyotard. Danaher has given us, as he says, “a history of the way the philosophical imagination has caused human consciousness to evolve in order to make sense of new data as it has appeared over our history.”

This is a small book

filled with big understanding and insight for all who would like to find out why they look at life the way they do and where we are heading as we continue to evolve.—Paul Smith, author of Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve

James Danaher expands our understanding of the meaning of truth, reconnecting it to beauty and goodness. His exploration of truth’s philosophical evolution helps us appreciate how truth is being itself. This insightful book takes high philosophical concepts and makes them interesting and accessible for the general reader.— Steve McIntosh, author of The Presence of the Infinite, and president of The Institute for Cultural Evolution

“For beginners, it will provide a useful overview of many—possibly even most—of the high points of Western philosophy. For philosophy graduate s

tudents and professors, it will provide a lot to think about and (often) disagree with. For theologians, it may provoke thought and comment about what is truly good or valuable in religion and theology…. But in its short 172 pages the book covers an enormous ground…. It is also remarkably well and clearly written, with a minimum of philosophical jargon, so almost everyone should be able to read it without straining to understand what the writer is trying to say. I recommend it without hesitation.” —Excerpt from International Journal on World Peace, September 2017, by Lloyd Eby, Lecturer in Philosophy at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

“James Danaher has written a clear, succinct, and compulsively readable history of the philosophical imagination and the evolution of the modern mind. Even more important, he has questioned the usual truth-claims of philosophy and suggested that there is another way to truth that is both higher and wiser. Not to be missed.”—Maggie Ross, author of Silence: A User’s Guide.

The Danger of Science in a World Without Wisdom

One can imagine many contenders for the crisis of our times: climate change, nuclear weapons, rapid population growth, mass extinction of species, pollution of earth, sea and air, gross inequalities of wealth and power. All these are serious, but they are all consequences of an even graver, more fundamental crisis: science in a world without wisdom.

The astonishing intellectual success of modern science and technology has led to a vast panoply of benefits for humanity. It has made the modern world possible. But it has also made possible all our current grave global crises. Scientific and technological progress led to modern industry and agriculture, modern medicine and hygiene, modern armaments; these in turn have led to habitat destruction, extinction of species, pollution, gross inequalities, lethal modern war, nuclear weapons, and climate change.

There are those who blame science for this tragic state of affairs, but that misses the point. The real problem is science in a world without wisdom. The extraordinary successes of modern science and technology have bequeathed to (some of) us unprecedented powers to act, vastly in excess of anything possessed by earlier generations. Exercising these powers, often we do good, in curing disease, feeding the hungry, and providing all the amenities and luxuries of our modern world. But without wisdom, inevitably our unprecedented powers to act will do harm, whether unintentionally, as when modern life leads to global warming, or intentionally, as when modern weapons are used in war and terrorism.

Before the age of modern science and technology, we lacked the power to do too much damage to ourselves or the planet. Now that we possess powers to act far exceeding anything of previous ages, lack of wisdom has become a menace. In the age of modern science and technology, wisdom has become, not a private luxury, but a public necessity. We must become a bit wiser to survive.

How Can the World Learn Wisdom?

That makes it a matter of supreme urgency to answer the following question: How can the world learn wisdom? How can the world acquire enough wisdom to avoid using our scientific and technologically enhanced power to cause devastation, suffering, and death (whether intentionally or unintentionally)?

The hope that humanity might acquire wisdom is as old as the hills. Ancient Greek Philosophers sought wisdom. Buddha, Jesus and other prophets hoped humanity might acquire wisdom too. But our modern history reveals, not growing wisdom, but rather an extraordinary confusion of achievement, nobility, stupidity, and savagery. There are even those, such as John Gray, who pour scorn on the whole idea of humanity becoming wiser, even to the extent of condemning the very aspiration as causing untold misery. Pessimism about humanity achieving social progress to a better world is rampant, helped on by such recent events as Brexit, Trump, and the rise of far right political parties in Europe and elsewhere.

The key to how it may be possible for humanity to acquire a bit more wisdom is, however, almost universally overlooked. It is this: We may be able to learn from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a better, wiser world. The very thing that has created the crisis of our times—unprecedented scientific progress—may also contain within it the key to the solution to this crisis: how to achieve social progress towards a wiser world.
This is not a new idea. It goes back to the 18th century Enlightenment. The philosophes of the French Enlightenment, in particular, did everything they could to put this idea into practice in their lives, and it had astonishing repercussions for subsequent history.

The Philosophes Botched Implementation of the Basic Enlightenment Idea

Unfortunately, in putting the idea into practice, the philosophes made three monumental blunders. They botched the job. And it is their botched version of the basic idea that was subsequently taken up by others, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, so that it is now built into our institutions of learning, into our schools and universities, all around the world. Our universities embody the magnificent idea of the Enlightenment, but it is a botched version of this idea, and it is that which we suffer from today. It is that which sabotages our attempts to anticipate and solve our grave, science-induced global problems in increasingly effective, intelligent and humane ways.

If we are to put properly into practice the magnificent idea of the Enlightenment of learning from scientific progress how to achieve social progress towards a wiser world, it is absolutely essential that we get the following three steps right:

The progress-achieving methods of science need to be correctly identified.

These methods need to be correctly generalized so that they become fruitfully applicable to any human endeavour, whatever its aims may be, and not just applicable to the scientific endeavour of improving knowledge.

The correctly generalized progress-achieving methods then need to be used correctly in the great human endeavour of trying to make social progress towards an enlightened world.

Unfortunately, the philosophes of the Enlightenment got all three points disastrously wrong. They failed to identify correctly the progress-achieving methods of natural philosophy; they failed to generalize these methods properly; and, most disastrously of all, they failed to institutionalize them properly so that humanity might learn how to become more humane by rational means. And versions of these blunders are still built into academia today.

Acknowledging and Improving Problematic Aims of Science

Even today, scientists take for granted what the philosophes took for granted: the basic intellectual aim of science is truth, the basic method being to select theories solely on the basis of evidence, empirical success, and failure. No! The basic aim of science is not truth per se, but rather the highly problematic one of truth presupposed to be explanatory. There are profoundly problematic metaphysical assumptions inherent in the aims of science, and problematic assumptions concerning values and social use of science.

As I spell out in some detail in my book Understanding Scientific Progress (Paragon House, 2017), we need a new conception of science that represents science in the form of a hierarchy of aims. This hierarchical framework provides the means by which the most specific and problematic aims, low down in the hierarchy, may be progressively improved in the light of what leads to the greatest empirical success, and at the same time accords best with less specific, less problematic aims, high up in the hierarchy of aims.

From Scientific Progress to Social Progress towards a Wiser World

This aims-and-methods improving conception of the progress-achieving methods of science can be generalized to apply, in a potentially fruitful way, to all worthwhile human endeavours with problematic aims. Above all, it can be applied to the heart-rending endeavour to make social progress towards a better, wiser world. The aim of this endeavour is permanently and profoundly problematic for all sorts of more or less obvious reasons. Here, above all, we need to try to improve our aims as we act. It is vital that we build into our progress-seeking social endeavours—politics, industry, agriculture, finance, law, education, diplomacy—the aims-and-methods improving methodology generalized from that of science.

So difficult is this to do, that the endeavour needs all the help it can get from academia, specifically from social inquiry. Indeed, a fundamental task for social inquiry is to help build into our institutions, into the fabric of social life, the aims-and-methods improving methodology I have indicated. Social inquiry, conducted in this way, has the character of social methodology, or social philosophy. It is only secondarily social science—engaged in the pursuit of knowledge of social phenomena.

The upshot of the argument is that we urgently need to bring about a profound and far-reaching revolution in the social sciences: economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology and the rest. These disciplines, properly conceived, have as their basic task, to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways and, in the long term, build into institutions and ways of life aims-and-methods improving methodologies generalized from those of natural science. It means, more generally, that we need a revolution in academia, so that the basic aim becomes, not just the acquisition of specialized knowledge, but rather the promotion of social wisdom—wisdom being the capacity, the active endeavour, and perhaps the desire, to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, wisdom so construed including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides.

This is not remotely how universities are conducted today. Why not? Because they are still in thrall to the blunders of the Enlightenment. The worst blunder the Enlightenment made was at the third of the above three steps. The philosophes thought the task was to apply progress-achieving methods, generalized from those of natural science, not to social life itself, not to problems of living, not to the great, problematic task of achieving enlightened civilization, but rather to the task of acquiring knowledge about social phenomena—to the task of creating the social sciences, in other words. And this monumental blunder has never been put right. It means we have failed to learn from the astonishing progressive success of natural science how to make some degree of comparable progressive success in gradually enabling our world to be a bit more humane, sane, just, equal and peaceful.

]]>https://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/ideas/how-to-tackle-the-fundamental-crisis-of-our-times/feed/0A Needed Reset for Liberal Culturehttps://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/ideas/a-needed-reset-for-liberal-culture/
https://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/ideas/a-needed-reset-for-liberal-culture/#respondMon, 27 Mar 2017 21:38:42 +0000http://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/?p=89By Gordon Anderson, President, Paragon House The rise of Donald Trump, Brexit, Geert Wilders, and Marine Le Pen can be seen as a reaction to the failure of Western liberal establishment culture to successfully lead the transition to global society. These …Continue reading →

The rise of Donald Trump, Brexit, Geert Wilders, and Marine Le Pen can be seen as a reaction to the failure of Western liberal establishment culture to successfully lead the transition to global society. These popular figures represent a return to the last successful level of social development—nationalism.

We could say that this a reset. The leading edge of Western liberalism has become dysfunctional. An integral worldview should supply the necessary elements that liberalism has so far ignored in its zeal to create a more just and inclusive world.

Liberal culture has over-reacted to the limitations of traditional societies that needed to be transcended and included. Those who led the social revolutions of the 1960s tended to “throw out the baby with the bathwater.” They reacted like children who had matured enough to sense injustice, but not developed a broad enough view to ask, “What values in our traditional societies enabled us to evolve this far?”

While a few extraordinary figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mohandas Gandhi sought to move to the next stage of development on spiritual foundations, the masses engaged in social movements that sought political solutions—solutions based on the force of law. The force of law can be used to punish those who do harm, but does not create a higher spiritual perspective. In fact, in the absence of changes in heart, government programs created to serve the needy inevitably become sources of theft, corruption, and political dysfunction. Today, our political parties fight like children over the resources of society without showing concern for society as a whole. The West is currently taking a step backward in order to regroup and move forward in a more integral manner.

An Evolutionary Self-Correction

Philosopher Ken Wilber has recently published a path-breaking book, Trump and a Post-Truth World: An Evolutionary Self-Correction, that analyzes the weaknesses of liberal culture from the standpoint of the failure of growth in spiritual consciousness. Wilber’s integral worldview sees culture as going through a series of developments analogous to the development of the consciousness of individuals from birth to mature wisdom. Everyone’s path begins with total self-centeredness and moves towards maturity by expanding awareness and knowledge by transcending and including previous levels of consciousness.

Wilber uses the term “meme” to describe levels of consciousness. The “red (egocentric) meme” is closer to animal consciousness and might be portrayed by babies that kick, scream, and wave their arms when they don’t get their way. The “amber (ethnocentric) meme” is a bit more developed and uses rationalizations and dogmas to get its way, but still contains an element of oppression or coercion. The “green meme” that took hold in the cultural revolution of the 1960s recognizes the oppressive elements in the traditional meme, but was caught in too narrow a view and reacted against the previous meme, rather than transcending and including it—which would be an integral approach.

When people use words like “fight for peace,” they display an opposition mentality, not a mentality of inclusiveness.

Oppression Hierarchies vs. Actualization Hierarchies

Wilber sees as one of the main failings of the green meme the idea that “the lack of green values (egalitarian, group freedom, gender equality, human care, and sensitivity) is due to a presence of oppression. Lack of green = presence of oppression.” However, “the major problem with that view taken by itself is that it completely overlooks the central role of growth, development, and evolution” (p. 39).

Wilber argues that oppression is not the primary cause of unfreedom, but the absence of higher development. So long as the greens think that removal of oppression is a cure, they will never solve their problem. So, “it is not true that lack of green = presence of oppression: it is that lack of green = lack of development” (p. 40). “If we think that green values should be found universally, and their lack unerringly indicates an oppressive force, then we will see nothing but victims everywhere…. Our cure for this will not be to instigate factors that will help growth and development, but to punish and criminalize those at lower stages of development who are acting in oppressive ways” (p. 4, author’s italics). Thus, “to see intentional “oppressors” and “victims” everywhere is to totally mis-diagnose (and thus mis-treat) the illness (p. 42).

Wilber argues that the willingness for the greens to include “the deplorables” (those in an amber meme) in a national dialogue about cultural development — but to label them as racist, sexist or homophobic — is to be guilty of political correctness, which is simply another religion in the amber meme. To the politically correct greens that idea of development and growth for anybody is totally anathema because we have to accept everyone as they are, not that they are as they are because of the stage of development they have attained. Thus, “although the green will not allow the existence of any ‘higher’ or ‘better’ views, it still deeply feels that its own views are definitely ‘higher’ and ‘better’” (p. 43). This makes it an ethnocentric view, incapable of the inclusiveness it espouses.

Without a concept of growth and development, and without understanding there are hierarchies of development and actualization, those in the green meme do not have a “single path that actually works” (p. 46).

“One of the simplest points here is that for green to move from its extreme dysfunctional, unhealthy, and pathological condition to a state of healthy, vibrant, true leading-edge capacities, it is absolutely central that green heal its catastrophic confusion between dominator hierarchies and actualization hierarchies. Actualization (or growth) hierarchies are not exclusive and domineering, they are inclusive and integrating” (p. 52).

The Way Forward

We have heard an increasing number of liberals realizing that the hatred, name-calling, and ridicule of mainstream Americans put Trump in office. “The leading-edge cannot lead if it despises those whom it is supposed to lead….” (p. 57). Wilber argues that the failure of the greens was a lack of compassion:

“It is precisely a lack of compassion, care, and understanding that broken green avidly displayed (in academia, media, entertainment, and liberal politics); and more than any other single item, this mean-green-meme attitude is what led to the huge reservoir of resentment that led to Trump’s previously unimaginable win… It was a very high level of development that was infected with a low level of development. It was green pluralism infected with red narcissism/egocentrism” (p. 62).

After the green gets over its initial reaction against all hierarchies and abandons the idea that it has the complete truth, it will be able to begin healing. Many of the values espoused by Republican Party ideals (as opposed to Republican Party behavior), like responsibility, self-control, balanced budgets, and spiritual values, need to be transcended and included, rather than despised, ridiculed and excluded.

Wilber’s idea of moving from green consciousness to integral consciousness is a contemporary way of saying we need to adopt a parental heart, one that recognizes everyone is a child of God at some stage of development on their path from childhood to attaining a divine consciousness. Those people recognize others as God’s children who also need the tools to overcome evil, and work productively and responsibly to care for others. The confusion between oppressive hierarchies and actualization hierarchies needs to be overcome in the liberal worldview.

Integral Christianity

In Integral Christianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve, a Paragon House book by Paul Smith, presents the “perspectives of integral theory and practice, articulated by Ken Wilber, that help uncover the integral approach that Jesus advocated and demonstrated in the metaphors of his time – and that traditional Christianity has largely been unable to see.” Smith is involved in the needed liberal reset Wilber is calling us to. By providing a model for “transcending and including” the values of a cultural system (Christianity) that had reached limitations in its “amber” meme, yet had values to carry forward that the ecumenical movement in the “green” meme has yet failed explain.

Traditional evangelical Christians largely remain in the “amber meme” and promote a form of exclusivism. Yet their value system includes concepts of inequality in growth that were not essentially oppressive but promoted a Christian perfectionism that led to a tremendous work ethic “to glorify God,” and great desire to serve others through voluntary organizations, as opposed to attempting to use state force. Perhaps this is why many of these Christians supported Trump during the time of this reset for liberal Christianity.

The ecumenical movement in the churches was a spiritual precursor to the green meme in the culture at large, but ecumenical dialogues stressed rights and inclusiveness while ignoring responsibilities and limitations on behavior when it causes harm to others, or the environment. Ecumenical dialogues and genuine unification need to transcend and include past teachings that served a necessary purpose of human growth, economic development and social stability. This includes a reevaluation of the Ten Commandments, the parables of Jesus, and the sacred teachings of all religions in light of how they enable societies to function as they evolve from red through amber, green, and higher memes.

“With this book Smith continues his pioneering application of Integral Theory to Christianity. He shows the true and often hidden meaning of the Trinity. He says that Jesus’ experience of the Trinity ‘had three uniquely different personal relationships with three different faces of God.’. . . giving you a total of a very real, very genuine nine experiential realities! And this gives us a staggering increase in our understanding of Christianity! This is indeed another and major contribution by Smith to the manifestation of a truly Integral Christianity.”—Ken Wilber, author of The Integral Vision

]]>https://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/ideas/a-needed-reset-for-liberal-culture/feed/0Welcome to Paragon Househttps://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/about-paragon/welcome/
https://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/about-paragon/welcome/#respondTue, 20 Dec 2016 10:06:52 +0000http://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/?p=1Paragon House books provide readers with the knowledge and insights to make a difference in a world of chaos, division, confusion, bitter politics, and individual and social dysfunction. Nearly all these problems derive from a lack of adequately developed consciousness, …Continue reading →

]]>Paragon House books provide readers with the knowledge and insights to make a difference in a world of chaos, division, confusion, bitter politics, and individual and social dysfunction. Nearly all these problems derive from a lack of adequately developed consciousness, knowledge and skills. Mature adults need to transcend egocentrism and ethnocentrism and acquire a holistic and responsible view of the world to be good parents, teachers, and social leaders. Today, human rights include group rights and pluralism but many religious, economic, and political groups have been unable to transcend group consciousness, causing genocide, religious hatred, and partisanism. Paragon House books explain these problems and how they can be overcome.